[1] The best example of this method of "restatement" is probably Plutarch'sDe Iside et Osiride, which discusses the Egyptian myth and the various explanations given of it in accommodation to philosophic truth. Heathenism did not long survive this kind of help; nor is it surprising that it did not.
[2] SeeProlegomena to Acts, i. 199-216.
[3] Ritschlianism is perhaps an exception: it did at least attempt a synthesis with science approached through Kantian philosophy. But was it successful?
[4] No one has seen this more clearly, or expressed it more vividly, than the late George Tyrrell, especially in hisA Much Abused LetterandChristianity at the Cross-roads.
[5] Josephus,Antiq.xviii. 1. 1 and 6. See alsoProlegomena to Acts, i. 421 ff.
[6] This literature is now available as a whole in R. H. Charles,Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.
[7] The suggestion has even been made that some of the polemic in the gospels, which is—as the text stands—directed against the Pharisees and Rabbis, was historically intended for the Sadducees. It was too important to be lost, and, as those who were originally attacked had ceased to be important, it was turned against the only Jewish party which still survived to oppose Christianity at the time when the gospels were written. See also p. 32.
[8] This is a free rendering, somewhat paraphrased to bring out the meaning, of the account of the martyrdom of Akiba under Tinnius (Turnus) Rufus in the Jerusalem Talmud (Berakh.ix. 7). SeeProlegomena to Acts, I. 62.
[9] J. Klausner'sDie messianische Vorstellungen des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter der Tannaitenis probably the clearest statement of the facts.
[10] The fourth book of Ezra is in many ways the finest of all Apocalypses, and the English authorised version (in which it is called 2 Esdras) is a magnificent piece of English, needing, however, occasional elucidation and correction by the critical editions of G. H. Box,The Ezra Apocalypse, and of B. Violet, in the edition of the Greek Christian writers of the first three centuries published by the Berlin Academy.
[11] J. Weiss,Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes. The first edition of this book is smaller and better than the second.
[12] TheQuest of the Historic Jesus.
[13] I have endeavoured to deal with this question in theStewardship of Faith, pp. 36 ff.
[14] Mark x. 17 ff.
[15] Mark xii. 35.
[16] Mark ix. 43 ff.; cf. Matt. v. 29. ff.
[17] Quoted by C. G. Montefiore in theProlegomena to Acts, pp. 71 f.
[18] See Mark ii. 27. For the meaning of Son of Man in this passage see p. 60.
[19] Neither reason nor conscience is infallible: the tribunal of history condemns many actions which were undoubtedly dictated by conscience. Nevertheless we have no better guides in action, and both reason and conscience have the peculiarity that the more they are used the better do they become, and conversely that if they be neglected they cease to be available in time of need. Men who habitually use their powers in order to circumvent either conscience or reason in the end find they are unable to use them at all. The distinction between right and wrong disappears when conscience dies, and that between fact and fiction when reason is neglected. The one is the danger which besets clever politicians, the other the nemesis which waits on popular preachers.
[20] The situation becomes pathetically impossible when men's theological conscience is shocked by the suggestion that Jesus was wrong, and their political conscience by the claim that he should be obeyed.
For the history of the disciples after the death of Jesus we are dependent upon a single source, the Acts of the Apostles, which can, however, be controlled, and to some extent corrected, by the gospels and by the epistles of Paul.
It is now generally recognised that if any one wishes to write a life of Christ he ought to base his work not on the gospels as we have them now, but rather on the information provided by the critical analysis of the gospels as to their sources. These sources, or at least the two oldest and most important, have become well known as Mark and Q. Every one nowadays is aware that behind Matthew and Luke is a document which was almost or entirely identical with our Mark, and that in addition to this both Matthew and Luke used another source, or possibly sources, to which the name of Q is given. In general, however, there is a tendency among those who have acquired this insight into the composition of the gospels from lectures or from little books rather than by the study of a synopsis toattach altogether too rigid an importance to these results.
Mark, though a document of early date and unsurpassed value, is the Greek edition of an earlier Aramaic tradition, probably, though not certainly, in documentary form before it was translated. It would be a miracle if it contained nothing due to the Greek circle in which its present form was produced.
Q, after all, is the name, not of an existing document, but of the critical judgement that there is a documentary source behind material common to Matthew and Luke but absent in Mark. This critical judgement is accepted by theologians as well as critics; but theologians, with a distrust of criticism not wholly unjustified, frequently prefer a mechanical to a rational application of this discovery, and dignify their preference by calling it objective, though it is difficult to see why a process should be regarded as objective, in any valuable sense of the word, because it automatically accepts as derived from Q everything common to Matthew and Luke, and leaves out all the rest. It is merely a method of canonising the subjectivity of Matthew when it agrees with that of Luke, or of Luke when it agrees with that of Matthew, and damning both of them when they happen to disagree. Why the subjectivity of the editors of the gospels becomes objective when it is accepted by modern writers is a little difficult to see.
The result of this concentration of attention on the value of synoptic criticism for the life of Jesusand of the neglect of the editorial subjectivity of the evangelists has been a general tendency to overlook the value of the gospels as the record of the opinion of the generation which produced them. Yet obviously there are no other documents which tell us the views held in the early Church of the teaching and office of Christ. On this subject they give even more information than Acts, and enable us to control it by showing the gradual development of thought and language in the Christian community.
Similarly, for a slightly later period and for a different locality, the Pauline epistles give us glimpses of the process of development—a process by no means always peaceable—of which the results are recorded in the second part of Acts.
In this way the critical use of the gospels, the Acts, and Pauline epistles enable us to trace the general outline of the early stages of the synthesis between primitive Jewish Christianity and the spirit of Graeco-Oriental mysteries. It takes us in succession into Jerusalem, Antioch, and Corinth, not because these were the only churches which grew up in this period, but because it is in the main their tradition which is preserved in the documents at our disposal.
What was the course of events immediately after the death of Jesus? There is no period of which the details are more obscure, but the criticism of Mark and Acts enables us to reconstruct its general outline. The fortunate preservation of Mark enables us tocorrect the narrative of Acts. If we had Acts alone we should have no doubt but that the disciples stayed in Jerusalem, and settled there from the time when they entered it with Jesus on the first Palm Sunday until the day when they left it to preach to the world outside. Mark, however, is convincing proof that Acts has omitted a complete incident. In Mark xiv. 28 Jesus is represented as saying, "After I am risen I will go before you into Galilee," and in Mark xvi. 7 the young man at the tomb says, "Go tell his disciples and Peter that he goes before you into Galilee, there ye shall see him." The sequence of events clearly implied is that the disciples after the death of Jesus went back to Galilee, where they saw the risen Jesus. Inspired by this vision, they returned to Jerusalem to wait for his return in triumph, and meanwhile to continue the work which he had begun. Unfortunately the end of Mark, which undoubtedly described the details, has disappeared, but the general sequence is as clear as anything can be which is not definitely narrated.
The general tenor of the narrative in Acts makes it plain that in Jerusalem they settled down as a separate synagogue. Any ten Jews had a right to form a synagogue of their own, and general community of interests, joined to opinions differing from those of others, would be the natural basis of its organisation; but it is sometimes hard for Christians, who have come to think of identity of opinion, especially on points beyond the reach of proof, asthe basis of ecclesiastical life, to understand that Palestinian Judaism admitted the widest possible range of thought, and that the Church of Israel rested not on uniformity of thought, but on obedience to the Law. Naturally there was in point of fact considerable agreement in opinion, and naturally also difference of opinion led to quarrels and hostility; but in general the Church of Israel in the first century was as characteristically based on uniformity of conduct as the Christian Church in the fourth and following centuries was based on uniformity of opinion.
On three points this synagogue of the Nazarenes, as the disciples were called, differed from other Jews: (1) They held the opinion that they were inspired, at least at intervals, by the Spirit of God; (2) they followed a special kind of communistic rule which they probably regarded as fulfilling the teaching of Jesus; (3) they held and preached distinctive opinions about Jesus himself.
The opinion that the disciples were inspired by the Holy Spirit was in some ways the keystone of Christian life. It formed a connecting link with the authority of Jesus himself; for, whatever the later generation of Christians may have thought, it is clear from Mark that Jesus in his public preaching never claimed the authority of any special office or function such as that associated with the word "Messiah" or with the title "Son of Man," even though he may have allowed an inner ring of disciples to believe that these were the offices to which he wasentitled. Nor during his lifetime did he even permit his followers in their preaching to ascribe any such rank to him. The authority which he actually claimed for his words and deeds was that of the Holy Spirit of God; and those who maintained that he cast out demons by the power of Satan were, he said, guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. It is probable that the gospel tradition is trustworthy which associates his baptism at the hands of John the Baptist with his first consciousness of this inspiration.
Jesus, then, had claimed for himself, openly and publicly, the authority of the Holy Spirit. There is no evidence that any of his disciples had claimed this for themselves during his lifetime, but after his death it seemed to them that the Spirit which had filled their Master had descended on them, inspiring their words and guiding their actions.[1]
What ought to be our verdict on this claim of the first Christians? To see the question in its true light it is necessary to distinguish between the experience of the Christians and the opinion which they held about it. Their opinion was that they had been taken possession of by the Spirit of God, which was acting through them, so that their words and deeds had the authority no longer of fallible man but of the omnipotent and infallible God. This theory was a heritage from a distant past in Israelwhen the Spirit of the Lord had been regarded as the source of all extraordinary events, good or evil. Later, evil events had no longer been attributed to the Spirit of the Lord, but to demons or unclean spirits who peopled the earth and took possession of men as they found opportunity. To them were attributed disease, misfortune, and especially the raving of madness, while healing and prophecy were attributed to the Divine Spirit.
In modern times we no longer attribute disease, misfortune, or madness to devils, not because these phenomena have ceased, but because we have a different theory of their origin, which, on the whole, produces more satisfactory therapeutic results than the theory of possession. Similarly the phenomena of prophecy, which the Jews ascribed to the Spirit of God, remain. There has never been a generation lacking in men who believe that their action and speech are being governed by a compelling force, separate from the ordinary process of volition. Those who have this experience seem to themselves to be, as it were, the spectators of their own deeds, or to be listening to their own utterances. Under its influence individuals, groups of men, or even nations, are carried away by inexplicable waves of passion or enthusiasm which, once aroused, cannot be resisted till their force is spent. This consciousness has been felt in varying degree in every generation, and the progress of humanity can never be explained unless it be taken into account. Sometimes, in the inevitablereaction after the psychic stress of such experiences, men have resented, doubted, or denied the validity of their own consciousness; sometimes they have regarded it as possessing a value exceeding all else in life. Usually those who have it attract the hostility of their contemporaries, scarcely tempered by the allegiance of a few followers, and their names are forgotten in a few years, but sometimes the verdict of contemporary hatred is reversed by posterity, which endeavours to compensate by legendary honours for the contempt and contumely of life.
The problem presented by this experience is really twofold. It calls for a judgement as to its origin and for a judgement as to its value, and on neither point has there as yet been sufficiently clear discussion.
Does the experience of controlling force which the prophet feels really come from some external influence, or is it merely his consciousness of ordinarily unknown depths in his own nature? It is obvious that a theory of prophecy could be made on lines rendered familiar by psychologists, by suggesting that what happens in a prophetic experience is the sudden "coming up" of what is ordinarily "subliminal." It is, however, important to remember that this is merely a modern hypothesis, just as the Jewish view of inspiration was an ancient one. But it is impossible in a rational theology to combine fragments of two wholly different explanations of life and of the universe. "The Spirit" was an admirably intelligible phrase in the Jewish or earlyChristian view of the universe; it does not fit in well with the modern view of the universe. Similarly the theory of subliminal action fits very well into the modern view, but not into that of traditional Christian theology. Preachers seem to make a serious mistake when they try to combine the language of two rival hypotheses to explain the same human experience.
The judgement of value which ought to be passed on the prophets is no clearer than the judgement of origin. The early Church knew perfectly well that there were true prophets and false prophets,[2] and so did the Jews, but in the end the only way of distinguishing them was to say that a true prophet was a prophet who was right, and a false prophet was a prophet who was wrong. Nor can we arrive at any different judgement. The truth is,—and unfortunately the modern world is sometimes in danger of forgetting it,—that the difference between right and wrong, fact and fancy, possibility and impossibility, is inherent in the nature of things and incapable of modification by human beings, prophets or otherwise. It cannot be changed by the glowing utterances of poets, prophets, or preachers, or by the unanimous votes of peoples. All that man can do is to discover it and obey it with humility. The mere fact of discovery arouses in some men an emotion which for the moment seems to change their being, but theiremotion does not change or increase the truth, and it may be questioned whether in some cases it has not prevented them from seeing rightly the value of what they have found. For the same deep emotion is sometimes caused by error, and there are few mistakes more deadly than to judge the truth of what a man says, or the value of what he does, by the emotion which he feels himself—however sincerely—or arouses in others—however vehemently.
The way of life which the first Christians adopted was especially marked by an attempt to organise themselves on communistic principles. The Christians shared all things; those who had property realised it, and pooled the proceeds in a common fund, which was distributed to individual members as need arose. It is impossible not to recognise in this action consistent and literal obedience to the teaching of Jesus. The disciples had followed Jesus to the end of his journey in Jerusalem; they were waiting for his manifestation in glory, and sold all that they had and gave to the poor. But in terms of political economy the Church was realising the capital of its members and living on the division of the proceeds. It is not surprising that under these circumstances for the moment none was in need among them, and that they shared their food in gladness of heart, for nothing so immediately relieves necessity or creates gladness of heart as living on capital, which would be indeed an ideal system of economy if society were coming to an end, or capitalwere not. It is probable that the Church thought that society would soon end, but it proved to be wrong, and it is not surprising that the same book, which in its early chapters relates the remarkable lack of poverty among the Christians, has in the end to describe the generous help sent by the Gentile churches to the poor brethren.
We may, however, surmise that the breakdown of this communistic experiment was accompanied by other difficulties in the Church. It appears that by this time Christianity had attracted the favourable attention of a number of Jews who belonged at least by origin to the Diaspora, and this introduced a new element, destined in the end to become dominant and much more objectionable than the original disciples to the Jews of Jerusalem. We know from other sources that among the Hellenistic Jews was a tendency to liberalism, or Hellenism. This touched the Jews where they were most sensitive, for it affected not opinion but conduct, and seemed to threaten the destruction of the Jewish Law. They were apparently willing to tolerate Peter and the rest, so long as they confined themselves to holding peculiar opinions about the Messiah, and remained perfectly orthodox in their fulfilment of all the requirements of the Law. But when the synagogue of the Nazarenes took to themselves Hellenists the situation became intolerable: a severe persecution arose, Stephen was killed, and the rest of the Hellenistic party were driven out of Jerusalem, though theoriginal disciples remained, for the time at least, in comparative peace. The Hellenists scattered throughout the Gentile neighbourhood of Palestine, and their future history will have to be considered later.
The opinion which the disciples held of Jesus now became part of their preaching in a manner which had not been the case during his lifetime. To distinguish its nature and development requires a somewhat critical investigation of the meaning and history of the titles first used in speaking of Jesus. The chief of these are Messiah, Son of Man, Son of God, and Servant. That which in the end was the most important of all—Lord—was probably not used until a little later.
Messiah is really an adjective which, translated literally, means "anointed," or in Greekchristós, but whereas to say that a man was anointed has no more meaning in Greek than it has in English, it had in Hebrew the clear and universally understood meaning of "consecrated" or "appointed by God." It was applied in the Old Testament to the high-priest, and it is habitually used in this sense in the Mishna. It was also used of Saul, of David, and of some of the other kings, but always with some defining phrase attached to it, generally speaking "the anointed of Jehovah." Without definition it is not found until the Christian period. There is no reason to suppose that at the beginning of the first century it was used exclusively to describe the hope of the Jews that aprince of the house of David would restore their fallen fortunes, though in the later Jewish literature it was used in this way.[3]
Thus if we try to construct the impression which the early Christians made on the Jews of Jerusalem by claiming that Jesus was anointed by God, we are obliged to say that the phrase itself only implied his divine appointment; it did not by itself indicate definitely the function to which he was appointed. But the way in which it was used must have suggested two special functions—that of the Davidic prince alluded to above, and that of the supernatural representative of God who would judge the world at the last day.
It is quite clear that the writer of Luke and Acts, and the editor of Matthew, identified Jesus with the expected Son of David, but there is room for doubt whether this fully represents the thought of the first disciples. There is very little in Mark which identifies Jesus with the Son of David. In the preaching of Jesus the Kingdom of God, so far as it was not the divine sovereignty, was the Age to Come much more than the restored monarchy. It is true that the people of Jerusalem seem to have been looking forward to a Davidic king, as may be seen from the cries of the multitude at the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. It is also true that Bartimaeus greeted Jesus as Son of David; but there is nothing in the recorded wordsof Jesus to show that he accepted this view. It seems, therefore, probable that just as the people were thinking of the splendours of a restored monarchy, while Jesus was speaking of the reign of God in the Age to Come, so they were looking for a Davidic Messiah, and explained Jesus' strange and overmastering personality in accordance with their own wishes rather than with his words. It is not the only point at which the Church followed the leading of the people rather than the teaching of Jesus.
The figure of the Son of Man destined to be God's representative at the day of judgement which will divide this age from the Age to Come is prominent in the undoubted teaching of Jesus, but forms one of the most difficult problems in New Testament criticism. There seems but little doubt that "Son of Man," which in Greek is an unintelligible phrase rather than a title, was quite as obscure to the generation of Greek Christians which produced the present gospels as it is to ourselves. It was to them merely the strange self-designation of Jesus. Probably the editors of the gospels believed that Jesus used this phrase continually, and introduced it into their redactions of early sources without stopping too narrowly to inquire either whether it had this meaning in the passage in question, or whether the way in which they were using it was consistent with the connotation of the phrase. The result is that both in Mark and in Q there are passages in which "Son of Man" represents an Aramaic phrase which might betranslated literally in this way, but would be idiomatically rendered "man." For instance, it is tolerably certain that in the passage in which Jesus speaks of the Sabbath and says, "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath," he really continued, "so that man is lord also of the Sabbath," but in unidiomatic translation the word meaning "man" was rendered "Son of Man" and interpreted as referring to Jesus himself. The reason for saying that this is tolerably certain is that the only alternative is that "Son of Man" really meant "Jesus," and was intended as a reference to the "Son of Man" who plays a part in some of the apocalypses, and it seems inconceivable that Jesus, who forbade his disciples to tell the public that he was the Messiah, could so openly have claimed this dignity.
Discussion of the phrase "Son of Man" has been going on for many years, and has made it increasingly clear that, apart from the unidiomatic translations referred to above, apocalyptic usage is the most important factor in the problem. An obscure but impressive passage in Daniel was taken up in the Book of Enoch, which describes in the Similitudes the vision of a Man—or in Aramaic phraseology a "Son of Man"—in heaven, who was "anointed," that is to say consecrated by God, to act as the judge at the end of the age. Jesus appears to have used this expression, and to have anticipated the speedy coming in judgement of this Man on the clouds of heaven. This much may be regarded as agreed upon by allinvestigators. But the curious and striking thing is that in none of the Marcan passages in which it is used in this sense does it unambiguously refer to Jesus himself. No doubt the disciples were convinced that it did, but it is therefore all the more interesting and important that his actual words as reported by them do not necessarily confirm their opinion. On the other hand, there is a series of passages peculiar to Mark (that is to say, none of them is found in Q) in which "Son of Man" does not refer to any coming in judgement, but to the approaching passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. If he really uttered these words, beyond doubt he meant himself by the Son of Man, and was introducing an entirely unparalleled and new element into the delineation of this supernatural figure. But did he use these words? In the description of the passion, death, and resurrection it is generally recognised that the exactness of the prediction probably owes something to the disciples' later knowledge of the actual course of events. Their conduct at the arrest of Jesus, and the entire absence of any sign of expectation of the resurrection, render it very improbable that Jesus spoke with the definiteness ascribed to him. In this case, therefore, there is decided reason for thinking that the phrase "Son of Man" may itself belong to the embellishment rather than to the body of tradition.
Thus the passages in which Jesus certainly uses "Son of Man" are ambiguous—they need notnecessarily refer to him, and the passages which unambiguously refer to him were not certainly spoken by him. For this reason it is somewhat more probable than not that the identification of Jesus with the Son of Man was not made by Jesus himself. But it certainly embodies the earliest opinion of the disciples concerning him, and it is in all probability to this apocalyptic figure of the Man in heaven, predestined to judge the world and anointed by God for that purpose, that the Markan tradition (we cannot speak with certainty of Q) referred when it described Jesus as "anointed."
A little later the circles represented by Matthew and Luke added to this the more popular expectation of the restored monarchy of the house of David; but the original stamp was never lost, and the functions of the Christian Messiah, as apart from his name, were always those of the Man of Enoch, much more than those of the Davidic king of the Psalms of Solomon.
Finally, the concept of the Man who was to judge the world was extensively modified by the actual course of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the Lukan writings, though probably not Mark, Q, or even Matthew, facilitated or confirmed this process by connecting the story of Jesus with the picture given in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah of the suffering of the righteous Servant of the Lord.
The Servant is a comparatively common title in the Old Testament for those who faithfully carriedout the will of God; it is used of Abraham, David, and Job among the sons of Israel, of Cyrus among the heathen, of Israel in general, and of the righteous portion of Israel in particular. In some parts, but not in all, the suffering of the Servant, whoever he may be, is emphasised; but there is no trace in the Old Testament, or in the later Jewish writings, that these descriptions were regarded as predictive of the future. It was inevitable that the resemblance of the death of Jesus to Isaiah liii. should sooner or later strike Christian readers of the Old Testament, but it does not appear to have done so immediately, and it is doubtful whether Isaiah liii. was the first "suffering" passage in the Old Testament to be ascribed to him. It is more probable that the use of the twenty-second Psalm was earlier.
One further title of Jesus in the early Christian literature remains to be discussed. He is referred to as Son of God. What would this phrase mean in Jewish ears? In general the Jews regarded God as unique. The idea of a Son of God in any physical sense, such as seemed natural enough to the heathen world, would have been unthinkable to them, but they believed that God himself had used the phrase metaphorically to describe the relation between him and his chosen people. It was a moral sonship, not a physical one in the heathen sense, or a metaphysical one in the later Christian sense.
In the later literature the phrase developed on twoseparate lines. There was the tendency, exemplified in some of the Psalms, and still more in the Psalms of Solomon, to use the phrase "Son of God" to describe the Davidic king, but it was also used in quite a different sense in the Wisdom Literature as the description of the righteous man, and especially of the righteous man who suffered.
In Christian literature it seems tolerably clear that the history of the phrase passed through several stages. The latest, though in the end the most important for the development of doctrine, is that of metaphysical sonship, which followed upon the equation of "Son of God" with "Logos." Somewhat earlier than this, in the early chapters of Luke, and probably of Matthew, is an idea of sonship which approximates to the physical notion of the heathen world. Earlier still it was probably used as a synonym for the Davidic Messiah. The question is whether this is its meaning in the earliest passage of all,—the account given in the first chapter of Mark of the voice from heaven at the baptism which said, "Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." It is generally held that this is a quotation from the second Psalm,[4] and therefore identifies Jesus with the Davidic Messiah. But is it quite so certain that it is a quotation from anything? The words of the Psalm are really quite different, "Thou art my Son" instead of "Beloved Son," and "This day have I begottenthee" instead of "in whom I am well pleased." Why should we suppose either that the voice from heaven was restricted to quoting scripture, or that it did so with quite remarkable inaccuracy? If, however, the idea be abandoned that the voice from heaven necessarily refers to the second Psalm, it becomes an open question whether Jesus himself regarded his divine sonship as the Davidic messiahship, or as that divine sonship which the Book of Wisdom ascribes to the righteous. The problem thus raised can never be settled, for the evidence is insufficient; but neither can it be dismissed, for it is implicit in the gospel itself.
The whole importance of this series of problems in the history of early Christology is often strangely mistaken. It seems to many as though the line of thought suggested above, which reduces to a vanishing point the amount of Christology traceable, in the ordinary sense of the word, to Jesus himself, is in some way a grave loss to Christianity. No doubt it is a departure from orthodoxy. But if the history of religion has any clear lesson, it is that a nearer approach to truth is always a departure from orthodoxy. Moreover, the alternative to the view stated above is to hold that Jesus did regard himself as either one or both of the two Jewish figures, the Davidic Messiah and the Son of Man described in Enoch. Both of these are part of a general view of the universe, and especially of a prognostication of the future, wholly different from our own, and quite incredibleto modern minds. How do we endanger the future of Christianity by doubting that Jesus identified himself with figures central in incredible and now almost universally abandoned forms of thought?
[1] I have discussed the story of the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost in theEarlier Epistles of St. Paul, pp. 241 ff., and have added some critical remarks on the various forms of the tradition in theProlegomena to Acts, i. 322 f.
[2] I have discussed the history of early Christian attempts to distinguish false from true prophets in "De strijd tusschen het oudste Christendom en de bedriegers" in theTheologisch Tijdschrift, xlii. 395-411.
[3] The history of the phrase in the Old Testament and in Jewish literature is discussed by G. F. Moore in theProlegomena to Acts, pp. 346 ff.
[4] W. C. Allen is a noteworthy exception. See his note on Matt. iii. 17 in theInternational Critical Commentary. See furtherProlegomena to Acts, pp. 397 ff.
According to Acts the result of the persecution of Stephen was the spread of Christianity outside Palestine. As the narrative stands it seems to imply that before this time there had been no Christian propaganda outside Jerusalem. But significant details show that this impression is wrong and merely due to the fact that the writer gives no account of the earlier stages.
After the death of Stephen Paul appears to have continued his persecuting zeal, and obtained authority to go to Damascus and prosecute the Christians resident there. Obviously, then, the Christian movement had already spread to Damascus, but there is no hint in Acts as to how it did so. That in so doing it had advanced beyond the limits of the Synagogue is not clear, but Damascus was essentially a Gentile city, and the following considerations suggest that it had done so. We know that the Jews of the Diaspora at this period were filled with a proselytising zeal of which the fact is more certain than the details. It is also tolerably plain from Philo thatthere was a strong tendency to Hellenise and go further than orthodox Jews were willing to tolerate. It is also certain that the outcry against the Christians in Jerusalem which led to the death of Stephen did not start among the native Jews but among the Hellenists—those who belonged to the synagogues of the freedmen and of the Cyrenaeans, Alexandrians, Cilicians, and Asians, who had synagogues in Jerusalem.[1] In addition to this, though Acts suggests that the origin of the Seven was the necessity of administering the funds of the community, it is clear that in point of fact it was their preaching which made them prominent. Finally, it is clear from Acts that Philip began to preach to the Gentiles as soon as he left Jerusalem, and that some of the Cypriots and Cyrenaeans did the same.
There is thus considerable though not overwhelming evidence that preaching to the Gentiles began somewhat sooner than is popularly supposed, and that before the conversion of Paul near Damascus by the vision of the risen Lord, or before the conversion of Peter by the episode of Cornelius, there was already a Christian mission to the Gentiles. The importance of this is that it enables us to see the history of the early Church in a somewhat different perspective. It shows that Paul was not the first, though he was undoubtedly the greatest, of the Christians who preached to the Gentiles. He wasa part of Hellenistic Christianity, and probably, as will be seen later, not the most extreme of its adherents.
We have, then, to imagine the gradual rise of a Hellenising movement among the Christians, of which the Seven were probably the original leaders in Jerusalem, while unknown disciples, of whom we only know that they were successful in Damascus, were carrying it on in other places. The Twelve appear to have regarded the movement with doubt and suspicion, and the Jews in Jerusalem always distinguished between the original disciples and the Hellenists. Gradually, however, the opposition of the Twelve and their followers crumbled away. The final defection, from the point of view of Judaism, was that of Peter. To judge from Acts he had undertaken a mission in Palestine, following up the work of Philip and probably of others, but the story brings to notice one of the characteristic weaknesses of Acts as history. It always omits or minimises differences of opinion and quarrels among Christians. We know this by comparing the Epistles with the Acts. It is therefore perfectly legitimate to suppose that there may well have been far more friction at first between the Hellenist missionaries and the Twelve than Acts suggests. But in the end Peter had a vision at Joppa which convinced him that he was wrong, and he accepted Cornelius as a brother Christian. Acts would have us understand that the whole Church at Jerusalem accepted Peter's position,but in view of the Judaistic controversy, which continued to rage much later than this time, it is certain that this is not in accordance with fact. It is significant that soon after this Peter was put in prison, and on his escape from prison left Jerusalem.[2]
From this time on, if not before, the undoubted head of the Church in Jerusalem was James, the brother of the Lord. What was his attitude towards the Hellenising Christians? Acts would have us understand that he was always on perfectly good terms with Peter, and later on with Paul. But that is hardly the impression given by the Pauline epistles, which very clearly distinguish Peter from James and his emissaries. Paul's view is that Peter was in principle on the same side as himself, and that he therefore had no right to yield to the representatives of James; but he never suggests that James and he were on the same side. Nor had the Jews in Jerusalem any illusions on the subject; when Paul appeared in the temple he was promptly arrested, but not until the popular madness of the year 66 did any of the orthodox Jews think of interfering with James, the head of the Christians in Jerusalem.
Thus Acts plainly has understated the amount of controversy between the Hellenising Christians and the original community. Failure to see this is due to the ultimately complete triumph of the Hellenistic party, who naturally looked on what was really the conservative position as Judaising,whereas the truth was that they themselves were Hellenising.
According to Acts the most successful centre of Hellenistic Christianity was Antioch. Here, too, it is possible that the picture presented by it is one-sided, owing to the fact that, at least in many places, Acts reproduces the tradition of Antioch. Doubtless there were other centres equally important. Neither Ephesus nor Rome seems to have been founded by missionaries from Antioch, though Paul and the other Antiochean missionaries came into their history at an early date.
The controversy between the school of James and the Hellenistic Christians appears to have been very acute in Antioch, but the details are extremely obscure. Acts represents the beginning of the Church at Antioch as due to Hellenistic Christians who left Jerusalem after the death of Stephen. Nor is there any reason to doubt the correctness of this tradition, which is probably that of Antioch itself. A little later Barnabas came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. Acts does not state, but seems to imply, that he came down, as Peter had come to Samaria, in order to criticise and control Hellenistic enthusiasm. But, like Peter at Caesarea, he was converted by the Hellenists, and stayed to help their mission. He went further than this: hearing apparently of the success of Paul at Tarsus he sent for him and co-opted him into the service of the Church at Antioch. It is worth noting in passing that the complete absenceof any details as to Paul's work in Tarsus, and the silence concerning his movements from the time he left Jerusalem soon after his conversion, proves that this part of Acts is an Antiochean rather than a Pauline tradition.
Soon after this more missionaries arrived from Jerusalem. They do not appear to have been active propagandists, but brought with them a sad story of approaching destitution in the famine which was at hand. The Church at Antioch rose to the necessity and sent Paul and Barnabas with relief.[3] Acts tells us nothing more of what happened, but that soon after Paul and Barnabas, having returned to Antioch, started on the "First Missionary Journey."[4] On their return, however, a mission of protest against their methods arrived from Jerusalem. Paul, Barnabas, and some others went up to Jerusalem; a meeting of the representatives of the two churches was held, and an amicable agreement which was in the main a triumph for Antioch was arrived at.[5]
This appears to be Paul's third visit to Jerusalem after his conversion; but this raises difficulties, and has led to considerable critical investigation and not a little controversy. It had always been supposed that this visit of Paul to Jerusalem was identical with that described in the second chapter of Galatians, but in that chapter Paul, calling God to witness that he is not lying, makes a statement which loses all its point if it was not his second visit. Variousattempts to explain this difficulty have been made. One solution of the problem is that the visit to Jerusalem described in Galatians ii. is not identical with that of Acts xv., but is an episode connected with the visit in the time of the famine relief, which the writer of Acts had either not known or thought it unnecessary to recount.[6] According to this theory the visit described in Acts xv. took place after the visit in Galatians had been written. But this theory does not answer the difficulty that the apostolic decrees are not mentioned in the Epistles to the Corinthians, and that it is incredible that they could have been overlooked by Paul if the account in Acts xv. were wholly correct. It seems better to accept the suggestion that the solution of the problem is to be found in the source-criticism of Acts.
The source-criticism of Acts has passed through three more or less spasmodic stages.[7] The first was early in the nineteenth century when a number of scholars endeavoured to analyse the book. Their efforts were not very successful, though they unearthed a great many interesting phenomena. Later on, in the 'nineties, another series of efforts were made with, on the whole, even less success than before.Finally, in our own time there have been some interesting suggestions by Harnack, Schwartz, and Torrey.[8]
The last named has shown extremely good reason for thinking that there is an Aramaic source behind the first fifteen chapters of Acts.[9] He is less convincing when he tries to prove that this was a single document, and that it was faithfully translated without addition or change by the editor of Acts. It seems more probable that there was more than one Aramaic source, and that it was often changed and interpolated by the editor.
Harnack skilfully tries to distinguish two main lines of tradition, that of Antioch and that of Jerusalem. He also thinks the Jerusalem tradition existed in two forms, which can be distinguished as doublets in Acts i.-v. He attaches Acts xv. to the tradition of Antioch, but it seems more probable that it belongs to the Jerusalem tradition. The truth may be as follows: soon after the time when Barnabas had gone over to the Hellenistic party another body of Christians from Jerusalem came to Antioch. In the years which followed there grew up two traditions of what happened next. The tradition at Antioch was thatthe Christians from Jerusalem had been chiefly concerned with the physical necessities of their Church, though they were undoubtedly men possessed of a prophetic gift. They had so worked on the sympathy of Antioch that it had accepted the needs of the poor saints in Jerusalem as a responsibility laid on it by heaven. This tradition is preserved in a short form in Acts xi., and in the Epistle to the Galatians Paul energetically sustained its correctness, incidentally mentioning some other events connected with his stay at Jerusalem, the perversion of which, as he maintained, had given rise to the tradition of Jerusalem. This latter tradition the editor of Acts had found preserved in the document which he has used as the basis of Acts xv., and if any one will read Galatians ii. alongside of Acts xv., not in order to see how much they agree or differ, but rather to note how far they might be different accounts of the same series of events, he will see that Paul's chief contention is that he only saw the leaders of the community at Jerusalem in private, and that they at no time succeeded in imposing any regulations on him. The vigour of his protestations seems to indicate that his opponents had maintained that the meeting was an official one, and that it had imposed regulations, namely, should the theory which is being suggested be correct, the Apostolic Decrees.
The two traditions are naturally quite contradictory; but human nature is so constituted that it is not impossible for two sets of people, especially aftersome lapse of time, to give entirely different accounts of the same events and to do so in perfectly good faith. The editor of Acts, however, did not realise that the two traditions referred to the same event, and made a mistake in thinking that the meeting which he found described in the Jerusalem source came after and not before the first missionary journey. Ed. Schwartz goes further. He points out that the first missionary journey follows the account of the meeting in Jerusalem given in Acts xi., and that the second journey follows the account given in Acts xv. If there was really only one meeting, was there not really only one journey, which the editor of Acts, or his sources, converted into two?
However this may be, and no agreement among critics is ever likely to be reached, it is at least certain that there was considerable friction between Jerusalem and Antioch, and that Antioch wholly refused to accept the dictation of Jerusalem. On the contrary, it undertook wide-reaching missions, of one of which Paul became the leader, founding churches in Galatia, Asia, and Achaea. Of his career we have an obviously good account, so far as the sequence of events is concerned, in the second part of Acts, and some interesting sidelights on its difficulties and trials in the Pauline epistles.
What were the main characteristics of the preaching to the Gentiles which thus found a centre in Antioch? Its basis was the intellectual heritage from Jerusalem which made the Christians teach thatthe God of the Jews was the only true God, and that Jesus had been appointed by him as the Man who would judge the world at the end of the age. This represents the teaching in Marcan tradition as to the Son of Man, but Paul also accepted the view that Jesus was the Son of David, though he seems to have eliminated the purely national character of the expected restoration of the kingdom of the Jews under a Davidic king.
The only complete evidence as to the exact form of the expectation which played a part in the teaching of Paul, and presumably in that of the Church of Antioch as a whole, is the invaluable description given in the Epistles[10] of the sequence of events to which Paul looked forward. According to this he expected that Jesus would come on the clouds of heaven; Christians who had died would be raised up, and the rest would be changed, so that they would no longer consist of flesh and blood, but of spirit. But, just as in 4 Ezra, the reign of the Messiah is limited; a time will come when he will deliver up his dominion to God. Then comes "the End," and Paul takes the picture no further. Is it too much to suppose that, like 4 Ezra, he thought that at the End the whole of the present order would cease, and that after it would come the general resurrection and judgement, to which he frequently alludes, followed by the life of the Age to Come? In any case the idea of the limited reign of the Messiah, and the increasedemphasis on the descent of Jesus from David, are points of contact with 4 Ezra, and thus make it increasingly possible that Paul thought that the resurrection of Christians to life would be separate from the final resurrection of all to judgement.
This original Christian teaching was essentially Jewish, but much of the phraseology in which it would have been expressed by Jews must have been unintelligible to Greek ears. It therefore soon either disappeared or was transformed. The Kingdom of God, for instance, is as rarely mentioned in the Pauline epistles as it is frequent in the earliest part of the gospels. The word "Christ," translating the Hebrew adjective "anointed," was entirely unintelligible to Greek ears, and became a proper name. "Son of Man" or "Man" would have been even more unintelligible; Paul never used "Son of Man," and it is doubtful whether he uses the word "Man" in the technical apocalyptic sense. But though the words were unintelligible the ideas had not disappeared. The functions attributed to the Son of Man in the gospels still remain attributed to Jesus in the Pauline epistles, though they are scarcely so much emphasised.
The Antiochean missionaries seem to have adopted a new word to take the place of the unintelligible "Messiah" and "Son of Man," and called Jesus "Lord." It is made tolerably certain by comparing the oldest strata of the gospels with the more recent that this word was not used in Jerusalem or in Galileeas a title of Jesus. It may have been used occasionally in Aramaic-speaking circles, but it became dominant in Greek. Its extreme importance is that it was already familiar to the Greek-speaking world in connection with religion. It had become the typical title for the God of one of the Graeco-Oriental cults which offered private salvation[11] to individuals. It was therefore inevitable that whatever the Jews may have meant when they called Jesus Lord, their Greek converts interpreted it in the sense in which the word had become familiar to them, and thought in consequence that Jesus was the divine head of a cult by which each individual might obtain salvation. The full importance of this became obvious in a purely Greek centre such as Corinth, but the process began in Antioch.
This change in the significance attached to Jesus had its correlative effect on the position which the Christians ascribed to themselves. They came inevitably to regard themselves as the members of a new cult which was superior to all others. Only by joining their number was salvation to be found. In this sense they began to interpret the phrase "Kingdom of God," which in many parts of the gospels very obviously means the Christian Church. Few things, however, are more certain than that Jesus had no intention of founding a new society outside the Jewish Church, and none of these passages can with any probability be ascribed to him, eventhough at least one can, on mechanical grounds, make out a fair case for inclusion in Q.
A correlative change was introduced into the attitude adopted towards the Old Testament. The Antiochean Christians refused to accept it as an obligatory law of conduct; but more and more was it interpreted as prophetic of Jesus, and not only of him but also of the Christian Church. In this way everything that was said of ancient Israel, and all the promises made to it, were transferred to the Christians, who claimed that they, and not the Jews, were the ancient People of God. The complete fulfilment of this process did not, it is true, take place in the time of Paul, but it was not long in coming, and even in the epistles there are many places which show that the Christians regarded themselves as the true heirs of the promise.
This transference of the Jewish scriptures to the Christian Church was probably almost as important for the future history of Christianity as the change which made Jesus the centre of a cult offering private salvation, instead of the prophetic herald of the Kingdom of Heaven, destined by God to be his representative at the End of the Age. It meant that Christianity shared with Judaism the advantage, which no other religion in the Empire had, of being a religion with a Book. Nevertheless the obvious fact that the Book was not originally Christian was destined in the long run to lead to considerable difficulty. Though the Old Testament is not always susceptibleof the meaning given to it by Jewish rabbis, it is essentially a Jewish book, and the attempt to find in it a series of prophecies foretelling the coming of Jesus was radically wrong. It could not be supported by any straightforward interpretation, which gave to the Old Testament its original historical meaning. The result was the inevitable growth of an unnatural symbolical interpretation which had little difficulty in extracting anything from anything. It is difficult to estimate whether the result has been more good or evil. It produced good, in that it very soon necessitated the growth of a Christian canon—the New Testament added to the Old—and this preserved much great literature for the advantage of future generations, and was a check upon extravagances of thought. Perhaps most important of all, it provided an ethical standard which successive generations of Christians have never succeeded in practising. They have indeed frequently tried to explain away the contrast between their scriptures and their deeds when it became too oppressive, but they have never quite succeeded, or been able entirely to satisfy themselves by these methods: the letter of scripture has constantly remained a salutary protest against the interpretation put upon it. All this has been of enormous advantage for the Christian Church. But on the other hand the infallibility ascribed to the Bible has been an easy weapon for obscurantism, and a drag on intellectual progress. It has prevented the Church from adopting the discoveries of science andcriticism in such a way as to make them applicable to religious life. Bible Christianity[12] in some of its more recent forms has become a serious danger, and in moments of depression a student is apt to ask whether in the irony of history the Bible, which strengthened and supported the Church in its early history, and helped it in many generations to moral reformation, is destined to become an instrument for preventing the adaptation of Christianity to the needs of to-day, and to drive the spirit of religion, which is eternal, from organised Christianity to take refuge once more in some newer forms, more receptive of truth, and less tenacious of error.